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Song Lyrics

Urge For Going

I awoke today and found
the frost perched on the town
It hovered in a frozen sky
then it gobbled summer down
When the sun turns traitor cold
and all the trees are shivering in a naked row

I get the urge for going
But I never seem to go
I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in

I had me a man in summertime
He had summer-colored skin
And not another girl in town
My darling's heart could win
But when the leaves fell on the ground
Bully winds came around
Pushed them face down in the snow

He got the urge for going
And I had to let him go
He got the urge for going
When the meadow grass was turning brown
Summertime was falling down and winter was closing in

Now the warriors of winter
They gave a cold triumphant shout
And all that stays is dying
And all that lives is gettin' out
See the geese in chevron flight
Flapping and racing on before the snow

They got the urge for going
And they got the wings so they can go
They get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in

I'll ply the fire with kindling now
I'll pull the blankets up to my chin
I'll lock the vagrant winter out and
I'll bolt my wanderings in
I'd like to call back summertime
Have her stay for just another month or so

But she's got the urge for going
So I guess she'll have to go
She gets the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
All her empire's falling down
And winter's closing in.
And I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
And summertime is falling down.

Footnotes to Urge For Going

Joni introduced the song this way on November 15, 1966 at the Wisdom Tooth:

"I had a request to do this song. It has been recorded as a single by a friend of mine by the name of Tom Rush and it’s available in the area. I like to plug it because I get royalties on the song of course. I think he does it very nicely. It’s a song that was inspired by the part of the country that I come from, a place called Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, which really isn’t a disease although I’ve seen it in some medical journals. The Saskatoon itch and all that kind of stuff. You get that from picking Saskatoon berries.

In Saskatoon or in Saskatchewan – or on the prairies for that matter, that includes the American prairies - the winters and the summers are very radical with the temperature varying as much as 150 degrees in a season. So when the winter sets in it really sets in and drops down to about 50 below and all the people sit around and complain a lot, but they never really do anything about it. Some people think that they’re frozen stiff but that’s not really true. They just complain and say “I wish I was in Florida" and the farmers and the people who are wealthy enough do go down to Florida or some island for the winter. But then the rest of us poor old common folk up there have to sit and suffer through.

And that was what I had in mind when I wrote this song but I think it means different things to different people. It’s call the Urge for Going."

Joni introduced the song this way at Gerdes Folk City in October of 1967:

Now I am going to venture very cautiously into standard tuning in my country hit of 1967, which had sort of a minor success on Elektra Records by a friend of mine named Tom Rush. It caused a little bit of controversy and came to the attention of a country singer named George Hamilton the 4th who I saw back in 1957 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan with Brenda Lee and an all-star rock and roll cast singing A Rose and A Baby Ruth. And a white blazer. With the help of Mr Chet Atkins and a couple of electric Carters they came up with a song that was a version of my song with a narration and all sorts of wonderful things in it. And I really enjoyed it.

Got my first royalty check the other day – for $15 [giggles]. That was for sale of lead sheets or something. This song is all about winters in Saskatchewan and uh, it gets pretty cold out there. In the summer it gets as hot as 110 degrees sometimes. That’s a record, of course. That’s an extreme. But in the winter it sometimes gets as low as 50 and 60 below zero... that’s another record at the other end. So, it really knows how to change out there - talk about going through changes. When winter comes along and the farms are all harvested and they don’t really have much to do if they don’t keep cattle. So most of them have winter houses in the Bahamas and Florida and they just escape, you know, to all the warm places like Philadelphia. [laughter] The rest of the people who have to stay there feel sort of like this...